MU's Arabic language program grows

After mastering Spanish, Derek Garth was looking for another linguistic challenge and settled on Arabic, a relatively new offering at the University of Missouri that has recently expanded.

Garth said he transferred to MU from Southwest Baptist University, where he majored in criminal justice and Spanish after taking Spanish through most of high school. There were several reasons behind the decision to learn Arabic, the senior linguistics major said.

"At first, my reasons were kind of selfish," he said. "Going into law enforcement," Arabic "is kind of the new Russian."

Garth said he thinks that, unfortunately, Arabic has been tagged as the new international criminal language. However, he said once he began class, he fell in love with the language and the culture.

Garth said he loves a challenge, and learning Arabic is proving to be just that.

"Arabic grammar is so intricate and unique," he said, noting the sentence structure is nothing like that of Romance languages such as Spanish.

Garth is now enrolled in intermediate Arabic. Ted Tarkow, associate dean of MU's College of Arts and Science, said the university has been offering Arabic for several years, and because of demand, it added the intermediate level this fall, with about eight students.

Tarkow said Zaid Mahir serves as the Arabic instructor and has been willing to try to expand the Arabic offerings at the university. Tarkow said that besides Arabic, the university is working to offer more coursework in other fields that touch on the Middle East.

"Increasingly, preparing students for careers or lives that are more knowledgeable about the Middle East should be one of our goals," he said.

James Hummel, a senior geography student, said he has always been interested in the Middle East, but his involvement in the Army National Guard led to his decision to take Arabic. He needed 12 credit hours of a foreign language, and as a member of the National Guard, he thought Arabic might be helpful.

Ida Winter, a sophomore journalism major, spent her high school years in Tripoli, Lebanon, where her father taught as a Fulbright professor. Winter said her time in Lebanon made her want to become a foreign correspondent.

"In order to do that, I knew that I had to learn Arabic," she said.

This summer, Winter spent nine weeks in Madison, Wis., at the Arabic Persian Turkish Language Immersion Institute, where she was only allowed to speak English on Friday evenings.

"It definitely helped the fluency," she said.

Winter is now enrolled in intermediate Arabic, along with Garth and Hummel.

"It's interesting the subset of Mizzou students, people who are so obsessed with Arabic and the Middle Eastern culture. … I have the feeling we will know each other very well by the end of the semester," she said.

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